Down To Earth

Editorial. Sunita Narain.
May XV. V. XIV

Gujarat vs UPA: models

of
non-governance?

by Sunita
Narain

The 2014
general election, it would seem, is becoming a
referendum on the so-called Gujarat model and the
something-UPA model. In the heat, dust and filth
of elections, rhetoric is high, imagery is weak
and facts are missing. Very broadly, the Gujarat
model is seen to be corporate-friendly, with
emphasis on economic growth at any cost and little
focus on social indicators of development. The UPA
model, on the other hand, is seen to promote
distributive justice and inclusive growth. And our
conclusion could well be that this model does not
work because we see little difference—high
inflation pinches our purse; poverty and
malnutrition persist; and crony capitalism
thrives.

In this way, the
referendum on May 16, when the counting is done,
could well be seen as a go-ahead to rampant growth
without a human face. But this, I believe, will be
missing the key point.

If there is a
referendum, it must be on the lack of delivery of
programmes for social justice and inclusive
growth. It cannot be a decision against the idea
of rights-based development. That would be
disastrous for India. So, what we need to do is to
think about what went wrong. And the next
government’s agenda must be to fix it. Not
to throw out the baby with the
bathwater.

The fact is that the UPA
government has invested too much political
capital, bureaucratic time and energy of its
countless advisory committees to dream up and
launch new schemes. It has done
little—appallingly little—to ensure
that the programmes get implemented on the ground.
As a result, when you reflect on the past 10
years, there is a desolate graveyard of good
intentions. The million flowers that never
bloomed.

Take the Mahatma Gandhi
National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA),
launched in the early years of UPA I with the
promise of providing employment to put a floor on
poverty. Ironically, in the first few years when
there was commitment to the scheme the Congress
Party was not even in charge. Raghuvansh Prasad
Singh, of Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya
Janata Dal, was rural development minister, who
spearheaded the programme and pushed for its
implementation.

In mid-2008, when the
Centre for Science and Environment reviewed the
first two years of the scheme, we pointed to the
need to focus on the quality of work that was
being undertaken. We showed that even though this
programme invested much-needed funds in water
augmentation and soil conservation works, the
focus was only on “work” and not its
completion. The scheme provided for a village
infrastructure plan to be the basis of the
work’s execution. But this was not
implemented. As a result, the crucial water
harvesting structures, which would have become the
basis of economic growth by providing water for
irrigation, were being wasted. Ponds were either
half complete or their catchment was not
protected. We said that this could change if the
right to work was converted to the right to
development. But this message, even if heeded, was
never implemented. Instead, in 2007, the UPA
government decided to make the scheme nationwide.
MGNREGA spread from 200 drought-affected poor
districts to over 600 districts, where such work
was not even needed. It went from being the
promise of a new tomorrow, to being a victim of a
populist today.

By 2014, eight years
later, after Rs 200,000 crore were spent, the
government admits that only 20 per cent of the 7.5
million works started have been completed. There
is no doubt that this scheme has made crucial
difference in rural India’s purchasing and
bargaining power. But if it has not put a floor on
poverty, it is because the managers of the
programme did not believe it could. They never
worked obsessively to improve delivery and to
evolve this largest human development experiment
to become the change itself.

The experience is no
different in UPA’s other flagship
programmes, be it the Forest Rights Act or the
Right to Education Act. The 12th Five Year Plan
document, perhaps for the first time, has a
separate chapter on social inclusion enumerating
an impressive listing of the many programmes for
distributive justice and poverty eradication. But
sadly, UPA will be best remembered not for
removing poverty from our midst, but for mocking
the income figures that defined the people below
poverty line. It is a sad legacy for a government
with so many potential game-changer
programmes.

Our demand from the new
government cannot be to reinvent the model of
development. Our demand should be that development
that is socially just and economically inclusive
must be delivered.